


sleep without a care

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cemetery, Gen, this is the result of sleep deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows that Cedric is a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleep without a care

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the Latin inscription, [CIL_12.1202,](http://www.attalus.org/docs/cil/epitaph.html) on the tombstone of Marcus Caecilius (140 B.C.E.).

Just before dawn, mist comes in from the fields and seeps over the tombstones. It makes a ring around the graveyard, its ivy, its bones. The mist fades away with the rising sun, but for a few periwinkle minutes, the house is hidden from view and Cedric can almost believe that it has always been like this.

He stretches out one pearly hand and watches it blend into the mist. He can’t tell where he begins and the air ends, when it’s like this—he looks farther, pretends he’s nothing but eyes. And then he sees a shape emerging from the haze. “Who’s there?” he asks before he remembers that there’s no point. Muggle children come here on dares once in a while, but they have never heard him before.

But this isn’t a child, he sees, as the figure approaches. This is a man with dark hair and a long coat, his head bowed as if he’s afraid to look around. And he starts when he hears Cedric’s voice. “Who’s there?” he repeats, a frightened echo.

A wizard. A wizard staring into the mist with wide eyes—and upon seeing his face, Cedric knows him. “Harry,” he says. The name rings through the wet air, bounces off the stones. “Harry—it’s me.”

From his expression, Harry recognizes Cedric’s voice, and though it’s difficult to read anything more from his face, he doesn’t look surprised. Still—“Cedric?” he asks. His voice is tentative, soft, half-hopeful.

“Yeah,” Cedric says. It feels odd to speak. How long has it been? He peers at Harry for signs of the years.

“I can’t see you,” Harry says. He speaks to the mist, his gaze darting fruitlessly here and there. “Where are you?”

Cedric steps into a patch where the mist is less dense. “Here.” He looks down and sees his body in silver again.

When he looks back up, Harry is staring at him, eyes wide. The green catches in the strengthening light. His mouth opens, but he is silent for a long moment. “I didn’t know,” he says at last. “I didn’t know, or I swear I’d’ve come sooner.”

“Know—what?” Cedric asks. “That I’m—?” He sees the answer on Harry’s face and presses on. “And what do you mean, sooner?”

At that question, Harry looks truly appalled. “It’s been,” he says, “well—a long time.” He glances away, pale rather than flushed. “I haven’t been able to make myself come back here until now.” He waves a hand at the ivy-covered tombstones lurking in the mist, the hulking, foreign shapes of the mausoleums. His gaze flickers toward the center of the graveyard, toward the place that Cedric avoids. He knows what lies there. He knows how it felt to lie there.

And he knows how it feels to be here, now—or how it feels to be almost, to be not quite. “It’s fine,” he says, because he sees the same knowledge in Harry’s face. He, too, has been, at some point, in-between. “I understand,” Cedric assures Harry, who looks more upset than ever. “I never go within ten meters of it.”

It doesn’t seem to help very much, but Harry nods reluctantly and tears his gaze away from that particular cluster of graves. “Are you,” he says, and then seems at a loss for words. He’s older—Cedric can see that now—but he doesn’t sound very different from the fourteen-year-old who was last here. His back is straighter, but his feet shift uncertainly. He holds his chin higher, but his fingers twitch for a wand.

Cedric waits. The gentle morning wind rushes through him and lifts the mist slightly.

Harry takes a breath and lets it out. “Are you alone here?” he asks.

The question is surprising. Cedric has never really thought about that before—alone, here? He supposes he is. But it doesn’t feel lonely to exist among the ivy and the yew trees, in an endless cycle of bright mornings and sweet twilights. “I don’t mind,” he says truthfully. “I like it.”

“But—” Harry frowns. “I don’t understand. When you were—alive”—he grimaces—“it looked, well, you were never alone.”

Cedric nods. He remembers, as if from a dream, the feeling of hands in his, bodies pressing close, his own voice mingling with others, air rising from his chest to a laugh. “I had friends.”

“Do you miss them?” Harry asks, and flushes, looks as if he regrets the question—but doesn’t take it back.

For the first time, Cedric feels a twinge of—something. He’s not sure what. It’s more immediate than the faint sadness he’s felt since before Harry emerged from the mist, which is like a constant ache deeper than where his bones once were, too slight to take much notice of. It’s darker, too, than the pleasant knowledge that it is morning, even if he can’t feel the growing light on his skin. He might almost describe the feeling as guilt, or embarrassment, or shame—it’s been too long to feel it properly, let alone to remember the right word.

And before him stands Harry, waiting. “Yes,” Cedric says, “in a way.”

Harry runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up more than usual. “But to—to become a ghost,” he says, “isn’t it a choice?”

“Oh,” says Cedric without meaning to. He feels suddenly vulnerable in a way he hasn’t felt since his last second of life. He remembers the instant of green light and the comprehension, the clench of his hands, the single, frantic beat of a heart which has long since stilled. He remembers—he was afraid. “I didn’t want to die,” he says. It comes out as a whisper.

It seems at first as if Harry hasn’t heard, but then he blinks and Cedric sees that his eyes are bright as the dewy grass. “Who would?” he asks, and his voice trembles.

“I was scared,” Cedric says. It feels crucial that he make this clear, urgent in a way that few things are anymore. “I was so—you have no idea.”

“I do,” Harry tells him, “I really do.” He reaches out as if to grasp Cedric’s shoulder, and his hand falls through nothing but air. “Ah,” Harry says, more of a sigh than a word. He blinks up at the brightening sky.

Cedric gives him a small smile. “It _is_ a choice,” he says. “I chose this.” And that is the crux of the matter, now that he’s come to it: this choice he made, it was decided in the small and desperate part of himself that no one ever saw. Not his friends, not his parents, not the people who cheered him on at Quidditch matches and in the tournament that lead to his death.

The clouds are beginning to turn pink near the horizon. “It isn’t so bad here,” Harry murmurs, watching the color spread. “If you can forget about—well, everything, it’s really quite beautiful.”

“I know.” Cedric wishes he could feel the chill in the air, which is now surely dissipating, or the breeze that dissolves the last of the mist. He passes his hand through the nearest curling ivy tendrils.

“There’s so much,” Harry says suddenly, “that you never knew. About why you died.” His eyes are fixed on Cedric with painful intensity. “Do you want to know?”

Does he? Cedric lets his gaze wander over the stones, now clearly visible with their weathered edges and faded, wind-worn names. The overgrown house looms dark against the pale clouds, while the doorknobs and window-frames on the little caretaker’s cottage are beginning to rust beneath their own ivy crowns. The rest of the village still sleeps where it lies nestled between the hills. Looking at it, this place where he died, Cedric feels the absence of feeling and understands that it doesn’t make any difference. “I only want to know,” he says, “if it’s over now.”

Harry needs no explanation. He smiles—for the first time, and Cedric notes the crinkling of the skin around his eyes: age, and something far richer. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we won. Because you helped.”

Cedric smiles back at him. “Good,” he says. There will be no more deaths like his, at night, afraid, not knowing why. No more ghosts left to wander forgotten corners. The first rays of the dawn sun shoot into the sky, turning the hilltop to gold.


End file.
